Don't Send the Searchlights
by PluralizesEverythings
Summary: "I stood by the open window smoking a cigarette and staring at the collection of papers that exposed so much of our lives, yet left so much out. Some things—like Soda and Sandy—were easy enough to be tactful about. I couldn't very well include the grisly details in a school assignment, but I'd gotten my point across. Other things, though, I'd omitted completely."
1. Chapter 1

**Hey y'all! This is my first fanfiction, so constructive criticism in the form of reviews is appreciated! Also, I'm searching for a beta and am fully aware that my grammar is atrocious. PM if you can help, or just want to toss around some ideas :)**

My composition book lay on the desk in the corner of our room; it was finally finished. Well, it was finished in the sense that I had something to turn into Mr. Syme and Darry would get off my back about it. He'd let up about some things, but I don't think he'll ever stop fussing over my schoolwork.

I stood by the open window smoking a cigarette and staring at the collection of papers that exposed so much of our lives, yet left so much out. Some things—like Soda and Sandy—were easy enough to be tactful about. I couldn't very well include the grisly details in a school assignment, but I'd gotten my point across. Other things, though, I'd omitted completely.

It almost amazed me how easily the words had filled the pages as I'd written about Soda and the rest of the gang. And for as little as I thought I knew about Darry, I'd sure had a lot to write about him. I'd even dared to tell the whole truth about Dallas Winston, and the guy was dead. Johnny had been the hardest to write about but, once I'd been able to start, his story seemed to tell itself.

There wasn't one word in there about Billie-Jean, though.

I realized Darry was standing in the doorway at about the same time I realized my cigarette had burned past the filter. Tossing it out the window, I muttered a curse and stuck my scorched fingertip in my mouth. Darry looked at me like he couldn't believe I was dumb enough to get burned by my own cigarette.

"I thought you were working on your theme," he said stepping into the room.

"It's finished." I motioned toward my desk as proof.

Darry turned. " _The Outsiders?"_ he read from the cover.

He made a move to pick it up, but I was across the room in a flash. I snatched it from him, clutching it to my chest like I had to protect it from something. It wasn't unusual for Darry to look over my homework, but this was different; he wouldn't understand. For a split-second I thought he looked hurt.

"I can't read it?" Darry asked, confused.

I shook my head, unable to make my eyes meet his. It wasn't like I usually went around broadcasting information about myself anyway, but I'd never intentionally kept something from Darry before. In fact, there was a time—when mom and dad were still around—that I told Darry everything. I didn't have so many secrets when I was seven, though.

Darry shifted uncomfortably, then cleared his throat and told me to get washed up for dinner. He disappeared down the hall as I stood there hugging our story like an idiot. Shoving the book under the mattress, I decided not to think about it again until Monday morning.

Even from the bedroom, it seemed too quiet for a Friday night. I'd at least expected Soda to be around, if not Steve or Two-Bit. The living room was empty as I crossed through it into the kitchen.

Darry had his back to me as he stood in front of the open oven door. He'd never admit it, but he hated taking hot things out of the oven. Darry might've been the strongest of us all, but he wasn't always the most nimble. Sure, he could do a backflip; he'd always been athletic, but he could still be kind of clumsy sometimes on account of being so big.

For example, he has to have Soda pick all the splinters he gets at work out for him because his hands are too big to hold the tweezers. Last Christmas I made him a sculpture in art class and he'd crushed it before it was even out of the wrapping. And he always burns himself taking things out of the oven.

Anyway, he was standing there wearing the kind of oven-mitts that go clear up to your elbows and an apron tied around his narrow waist. I remember the first time I'd seen him put that apron on. It was the morning after we'd lost mom and dad. Somehow Darry putting on Mom's apron and making pancakes had reassured Soda and me that things would be okay again.

"Dammit," Darry hissed yanking his arms out of the oven as whatever he'd been trying to take out clattered heavily back onto the rack.

I tried to stifle a laugh and wound up choking on it. Darry whipped around like he hadn't known I was standing behind him.

"I told you to wash up," he snapped, taking me by surprise. We'd been getting along okay for a few weeks now.

I kept my mouth shut and turned on the tap, waiting for it to get warm. As I stood there, I wondered if Darry was just embarrassed he'd burned himself again or if I'd really upset him by not letting him read my theme. I hadn't been aiming to hurt his feelings; I just knew he wouldn't understand.

By the time I'd finished washing up, Darry had managed to take dinner out of the oven and was setting it on the table. Tuna casserole. We ate a lot of casseroles when money was tight. I tried to forget that my hospital bills were probably the reason we'd gone back to eating casseroles lately as I sat down.

Darry sat across from me and briskly slapped a spoonful of casserole on my plate with a sickening squish. He served himself too, but then we both just sat there looking at our dishes for a while.

"It's just us tonight?" I asked eventually because the silence was getting to me.

Darry nodded and started stabbing at his food with his fork. "Soda won't be back 'till late;" he told me, "went to watch the rodeo with Steve."

I followed Darry's lead and picked my fork up too. I wasn't sore at Soda for not asking me to go to the rodeo with him and Steve. I knew full-well that Darry wouldn't have let me go anyway. Nights like this sure made me miss Johnny, though. Heck, I even missed Dally's wild antics.

Darry suddenly tossed his fork down and the sound of it startled me from my thoughts. He stood up and took our plates, putting them both in the icebox.

"What are you doing?" I asked, still sitting stupidly at the table as Darry took his keys and my sweatshirt from the hook on the wall.

"Let's go see Billie," he said tossing my sweatshirt at me.

I was so surprised that I let it hit me in the face and fall into my lap.

"Right now?"

Darry nodded. I jumped up from my chair so quickly that I almost knocked it over. I hadn't seen my sister since Johnny's funeral.


	2. Chapter 2

Darry wasn't typically very spontaneous; Soda usually caused excitement enough for all of us. I wasn't about to question him, though. I took any chance I could get to see my sister, which wasn't often with Darry working like he did. Besides, I'd missed a few weeks of visits while I was sick and more still because Darry had insisted on keeping me in bed for so long.

We usually went to see Billie on Sundays the way some people go to church, but it hardly ever seemed like enough time to me. The girls' home where she lived was far from the center of town where greasers and Socs collided. I could have easily taken a bus, but Darry still wouldn't let me go out there by myself. I'm not so sure if I would have gone alone, anyway.

I liked visiting Billie best with Sodapop in tow. It wasn't easy having to sign a registry book and wear a nametag to see your own sister but, somehow, Soda always made it seem more natural. He was always writing "Chilipepper Curtis" or something equally ridiculous on his nametag quipping, "What? No one believes me when I write 'Sodapop' either!"

As I climbed into the passenger's side of Darry's truck, I began to worry about how uneasy he could get sitting around in the eerily sterile visiting room. I wished Soda had chosen any other night to go to the rodeo.

It wasn't just the stringency of the girls' home that made Darry so uncomfortable. He'd been fighting with the our social worker, the judge and anyone else who would listen to get Billie out of that place for months, but hadn't been able to convince anyone that a sixteen-year-old girl would be better off living with her brothers than in a state-run institution. I doubted all this business with me and Johnny had helped his case very much.

I knew it really bothered Darry that our sister was stuck in a situation that even Superman couldn't fix; it bothered me too. Billie didn't blame Darry, though. She knew he was doing everything he could because he awkwardly told her so every time we saw her.

I looked over at Darry as he climbed into the truck beside me and started it up. He stared at me for a moment before looking away and telling me to put my sweatshirt on. I tried not to roll my eyes as I pulled it over my head and started toying with the radio dials.

"It's still busted," Darry sighed, sounding a million times older than he was.

He had been putting some money aside every week in the hopes of fixing it. I felt another sharp twinge of guilt as I realized he'd probably put that towards my hospital bills.

With the radio broken and Darry not being much of a conversationalist, the drive seemed to take even longer than usual. I stared out the window as the buildings passed by, the congested streets soon becoming quiet rows of middle-class housing. Eventually the houses became sparse, punctuating long stretches of sun-scorched countryside and I knew we were getting close.

"It's not visiting hours," Darry told me as we slowed and turned off of the main road. "But they'll still be outside for a while, at least."

It hadn't even occurred to me that we were restricted to visiting at certain times. I just thought we visited on Sundays because it was the one day Darry didn't work.

The girls' home came into view as we rounded the corner. I always thought it looked more like a school or even a jail than a home. A home is supposed to have a front yard and a mailbox and pictures of your family on the walls. A home should have chocolate cake in the icebox and curtains in the windows. At the very least, it should have doors on the bathrooms. This place didn't have any of that, though.

In place of a doorbell there was a buzzer which had to be rung before someone would come let you into a cold reception area, the walls were bare except for prominently displayed lists of rules and regulations, and instead of a yard there was a dusty, fenced-in area off the side of the building where the girls spent two hours in the mornings and evenings.

The old truck lurched as Darry pulled up on the side of the building and put it in park. Like Darry had said, the girls were all outside packed into the small courtyard. I quickly scanned through the sea of faded navy uniforms, but couldn't see Billie right off.

"Come on," Darry said impatiently, and I realized he was already out of the truck and standing by my door.

I got out too, running after him to keep up with his long strides as he walked along the fence. Some of the younger kids were chasing each other across the yard, weaving in and out of a group of older girls who were tossing a ball around. A handful of girls who looked to be around Billie's age were sitting at a picnic table near the building. They looked like they were doing schoolwork, but I didn't see Billie's auburn head bent over a book with them.

"There," Darry pointed to the far end of the yard.

Billie was sitting alone on the ground with her back against the fence. Her forehead was wrinkled with concentration as she stabbed at a small piece of fabric in her hand. I watched with interest as she continued to toil with it for a moment before holding the fabric up and suddenly looking downright baffled.

Beside me Darry let out a piercing whistle and Billie's head snapped up. Spotting us, she took off running towards us across the yard.

"What are you doing here?" she asked breathlessly, reaching the fence where we stood.

I couldn't tell if her dark blue eyes made her grayed uniform look that much more faded or if it was the other way around. They flicked from Darry to me and back again.

"Soda's okay?" she asked.

"Sure, he's fine," Darry said quickly "He's just at the rodeo."

Billie smirked. "Sure," she mirrored Darry's tone, "he was fine the _last_ time he went to the rodeo, too."

She was talking about the time Dad had made him quit riding. After the fall he'd taken, we were all glad when Soda's only injury had been a torn ligament.

"He's not riding," Darry reassured her, and then added, "At least he better not be."

Billie laughed, and I realized how much I missed having her around too. Maybe even as much as Mom and Dad. I watched as she laced her fingers through the links in the fence and as Darry automatically reached out to touch them—the first human thing I'd seen him do at this place. It occurred to me then that Darry didn't just feel guilty that Billie wasn't home, he actually missed her too.

He and Soda may have been close now, but not like he and Billie had been. Just like Soda not minding how absent-minded I can be and my forgiving his screwball sense of humor, Billie and Darry understood each other.

Soda could tease Darry a lot, but even he had his limits. Billie was the only one of us who had never been afraid to say exactly what she was thinking to Darry. I always figured that was on account of her knowing he wouldn't slug her.

I think Darry kind of respected her for it, though. It may also have been because she could stomach Darry hollering at her without batting an eye. The two of them fought over everything under the sun, but it never seemed to bother her the way it did me. I could hardly stand Darry yelling, but Billie rose to the occasion. She always seemed to know exactly what to say to put Darry in his place. Still, she wasn't loud like Evie or brash like Sylvia. She wasn't even very forward, like Sandy had been. In fact, compared to most of the girls I knew, she was pretty tame. Maybe she was just honest, and that was the difference.

Billie gave Darry's hand a squeeze through the fence before looking at me again.

"How's it going, Pony?"

I cursed the fence between us, wanting so much for her to pull me into her arms. Even in a place like this, she still smelled just like my mother always had. She still smelled just like home.


End file.
